Foster care and adoption; toddlers to young adults; it's all here-- faith and humor meet as this mom of four chronicles the joy and heartbreak of motherhood.

Saturday, May 6, 2006

May, 2006: Silence those tounges

This past
Sunday, two-year-old Jamie seemed especially calm during Mass. I don’t know if
it was the Superman fruit snacks I brought along or her newfound ability to
draw circles, but I found myself able to attend to the liturgy in a way I
haven’t in awhile. And, very oddly for me, what jumped out was the Psalm
response.

I
know I’m not supposed to play favorites with parts of the Mass, but I do. I
most look forward to the homily and a good one will stick with me for a week or
more. My husband and I still talk about several excellent homilies that are now
years in the past. Besides the homily, the Eucharist, the Gospel, the Sign of
Peace, the second reading and songs — probably in that order—tend to speak to
me the most at Mass.Too often, I regard
the first reading, Psalm response, and various other beautiful prayers as
transitional parts of the Mass that propel me toward my more favorite parts.
Most Sundays, if you would ask me what the Psalm was, I’d probably stare at you
blankly. But this past Sunday, Psalm 137 leapt out at me. “Let my tongue be
silent, O Lord my God, if I should ever forget about you.”

To
me, that Psalm is laden with meaning, on so many levels. The first thing that
came to mind as I sang the words was the difference between my husband and me.
Bill is a quiet person. While not shy, he will never be the one to dominate a
conversation or a meeting. I’ve never heard him interrupt someone he was
speaking to. He is careful about what he says and what he doesn’t say. “You
rarely get in trouble for what you don’t say,” he observed once. “The more you
talk, the more likely you’re going to say something you regret.”

I,
on the other hand, am a talker. I will talk anywhere, and with anyone. I hope I
am a good listener, too, but I know no one would describe me as quiet. I love
the spoken word just as I love the written word. I have yet to meet a form of
communication I don’t like. E-mail, phone calls, letters, cards, talking while
doing sports or doing dishes, chatting at a bar or at a church potluck. I love
it all. And perhaps that is why this Psalm struck me so. “Let my tongue be
silent O Lord, my God, if I should ever forget about you.” In those words is an
admonition for those of us who have the gift of the gab: be careful what you
talk about.

I once read
that there are three levels of conversation — the lowest level is having a
conversation about things, the middle level is having a conversation about
people and the highest form of communication is talking about ideas. The Psalm
reminds us that if a spirit of the holy doesn’t underline that which we talk
about, we have no business chatting at all. This doesn’t mean that we must
always speak of lofty ideas— much of life involves talking about when the brake
pads should be changed—but our conversation should not lead us away from what
is good.

The
other reason the Psalm struck me was because of something I’ve been saying to
my boys lately. I have little patience for them being critical of each other,
tattling on each other or complaining about what I made for dinner. My catch
phrase as of late has been, “If it’s not positive or neutral, don’t say it at
all.” After explaining what neutral meant to Liam, I’ve had a lot of success
with this phrase. I use it to cut off conversations before they even begin. A
boy glances at his broccoli with a look of horror. “If it’s not positive or
neutral, don’t say it,” I will tell him, taking a bite of my own broccoli. When
one of them comes in from outside with a look of rage because of a foul on the
basketball court or a bad pass in football, I use the phrase before he can say
anything. “If it’s not positive or neutral….”

The
phrase doesn’t always work , but I have found it cuts down on negative
comments. Hearing the Psalmist say the same thing to ancient Israel that I say
in my 2006 kitchen is reassuring to me as a parent. My advice for my boys is
thousands of years old. It is so sage that it is in the Bible. Maybe not the
exact words, but the idea.

Finally,
the Psalm strikes me as a perfect beginning to any meeting. Most meetings I go
to (other than those at work)begin with
prayer. To say, “Let my tongue be silent O Lord my God, if I should ever forget
about you,” is the most powerful way to begin a meeting that I can think of. It
is a prayer that invites God to help us speak, and it is a prayer for the
courage to be silent.

As
a talker, married to a quiet guy, with two talkers and one quiet guy as
children, I’m holding onto this phrase. I think it speaks to all of five of us.
The quiet among us understand its wisdom intuitively. We chatters need more
reminders. “Let my tongue be silent O Lord, my God, if I should ever forget
about you.”

About Me

Annemarie writes locally and nationally on foster care, adoption, parenting and spirituality. She is responsible for the content in At Home with Our Faith (circulation 80,000), which has won the First Place award in its category from the Associated Church Press for three consecutive years. Her Training Wheels column has appeared in the Milwaukee Catholic Herald since 2002 and most of these blogs appeared first in her Training Wheels column or as a chapter of her book, Discovering Motherhood (Ambassador Press, 2006). She is married to Bill, with four children (two biological, two adopted), and works in a job-share position at Johnson Controls as director of Corporate Programs in Diversity and Public Affairs.